


undetermined intervention

by camomiletea



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Family Feels, Fix-It, Frigga (Marvel) Feels, Gen, Good Odin (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, Time Travel, i'm honestly just obsessed with time travel fics tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-09-02 05:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20270545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camomiletea/pseuds/camomiletea
Summary: Loki had survived death before.This was the first time he had woken up in the past though.





	1. this must be the place

**Author's Note:**

> Another "send him back in time to fix it fic." It's been done before, and better than I could ever do, but I thought I'd give it a shot and exercise the ol fingers.

The first thing he became aware of was a breeze.  
  
He leaned into the gentle caress of it, stroking the side of his face.  
  
He breathed out easily, nestling deeper into soft sheets, hand clutching at the lush furs he brought further towards his chest. The other side of his face pressed into an old scent, gifting undertones of comforting cedar.  
  
_Familiar._  
  
He breathed out slowly, burrowing deeper into it all.  
  
He _knew_ this place, knew it completely. The heavy pang of sweet nostalgia slipped over him like the ocean, covering him like high tide on the shore.  
  
_Safe_, he thought still on the brink of what must have been a deep slumber. _Safe here_.  
  
How frustrating that the word, the thought alone of a safe waking, was what brought him back into a state of awareness quite suddenly.  
  
He scrunched his face against the light filtering in as his mind sluggishly pieced together his last waking memories.  
  
_Thor._  
  
He flinched violently, eyes snapping open and hands flying up to his throat as he began to choke.  
  
The feeling of a phantom hand still clenching into his skin overcame him. It crushed his oesophagus, was crushing _him_. His body heaved up trying to throw off his attacker.  
  
_Thanos._  
  
He threw himself from what he had momentarily thought was comfort, legs tangling into the sheets he had only just been nestling into and fell heavily to the ground. He gulped furiously, gasping down air greedily as he lay prone on the ground, eyes bulging, before he coming to the realisation that he was alone.  
  
Thanos wasn’t here.  
  
Loki was far from sleep now.  
  
He glanced around wildly, taking in his surroundings, seeking the danger he had just been in and finding only confusion the more he looked.  
  
The dark wood framing the fireplace, then to the mantelpiece holding large tomes he knew intimately, to the doors he knew led out onto a spacious terrace. He spied the sky he knew so well out of the glass panels, the top of a shrub he had tended to occasionally brushing the bottom of the frame. Morning light shone through.  
  
One of the doors to the terrace was open a crack, letting in the air that he had been soothed by only moments ago, rustling pages on the small desk to the right of it.  
  
His gaze followed to the bookshelves that lined part of the wall, lined with more books, books he had accumulated over so many years from childhood to adulthood.  
  
He squinted, still breathing heavily and bringing his hand up to wipe away the sweat on his brow, frowning further in continuing confusion. He lowered his hand, fingers touching his lips before bringing it back to the ground to support his shaking weight.  
  
“How?” he croaked aloud, head swinging around violently, drinking it all in as he pushed himself up. Voice stronger now if only a little vehement, “What?”

Thor.  
  
Thanos.  
  
The Tesseract.  
  
_Pain._  
  
His limbs trembled recalling everything that had happened.  
  
“Impossible,” he said softly, shaking his head and stepping out of the mess of his sheets. He moved over to the small collection of books atop the mantelpiece, grabbing one and flicking through the pages with urgency before coming to a page and pausing.  
  
A short laugh burst from his lips, his fingers tracing over the ink of inscriptions and amendments, handwriting familiar for it was his own hand. He snapped the book shut, whacking it flippantly against his free hand as he spun around to further investigate. He walked over to the doors that lead out onto the terrace and stepped barefoot onto cool tile.  
  
He closed his eyes as he breathed in the fresh air, creeping closer to the balustrade to look across the view he had grown up with.  
  
The mountains to the south, the oceans to the west, where he could just see the Bifrost gate. Heimdall no doubt standing watch with his all-seeing sight.  
  
He had seen Heimdall die, his body crumpling under Thanos’ rage.  
  
He blinked out a growing emotion he could not yet deal with.  
  
_He_ had died.  
  
He had given Thanos the tesseract, had given his last words, and then he had given his life in an act to spare Thor’s. To give his brother more time to escape.  
  
Loki didn’t know if Thor had perished after him.  
  
He rubbed his eyes from the growing moisture, shaking his head and looking back to the horizon of Asgard, of the home he had thought lost, destroyed by his and Thor’s own hands.  
  
He wondered vaguely if this was Valhalla, wondered if the Norns had treated him kindly for his final death. After all, they _had_ dragged him out not once, but _twice_ in both instances when it felt life had fled from him. The first when he fell from the Bifrost he looked at now, the other when Kurse had impaled him.  
  
He had returned from both, unsure as to why, waking up once in the hands of a titan and the other on the desolate plains of Svartalfheim, confusion flooding him then as it did now.  
  
_No resurrections this time._  
  
He laughed shaking his head, feeling once more, wholly alive.  
  
He moved back inside, feet moving quickly and hands reaching out to brush various artefacts he thought long gone. The horn of a bilgesnipe he himself had felled, the chair he had curled up in numerous times to sort through a good journal...  
  
He entered through into his other rooms where his attire waited for his perusal and his ceremonial armour hung from its stand.  
  
He moved to the floor to ceiling mirror, pace slowing slightly upon his approach.  
  
He huffed out a laugh upon seeing himself, reaching up to his cropped hair, a style he had worn through most of his adulthood, mussed by sleep and sticking up at odd angles.  
  
He stepped closer to his reflection taking in the smooth skin around his eyes, the lines that had once stretched across his skin now invisible to his eyes.  
  
Norns he was _young_.  
  
His bare chest was unhindered by scars, by the remnants of pain he had suffered under the hands of Thanos along with the long scar that had graced his sternum, gifted to him by Kurse.  
  
They were completely gone.  
  
Not hidden.  
  
_Gone_.  
  
He was struck by a sudden realisation.  
  
What if this was not his death?  
  
What if he had been brought back once again for a greater purpose?  
  
This felt all too much like reality, and if this was reality, if he was alive and Asgard alive with him and years younger than he had just been, then... had he traveled through time?  
  
What forces were at work to grant him such opportunity?  
  
Why him?  
  
And if this truly was the past he had been thrown back into before his fall, then that meant everyone who had passed on between then and when Thanos crushed his neck, _must_ still be alive.  
  
It meant Frigga would still be alive.  


* * *

  
He had run from his rooms not bothering to change from his bed trousers. The light linen clung to his legs as he sped through hallways filtered by light, spooking servants he could not care for right now. He must have looked quite unhinged, running in nothing but the pants he had slept in, but he _needed_ to know.

Vivid fantasy or reality?  
  
He came to a stop in front of her doors.  
  
Frigga’s chambers.  
  
His fingers reached out to touch the richly adorned surface of the doors as he pressed them open, pushing through into the light filled rooms his Mother occupied. Vast and grand in its own adornments, this was where he could oft find his mother weaving, teaching or else simply taking her own moments.  
  
Sun filtered in from her expansive terraces, looking out over the city of Asgard no matter where one stood. The light caught the reflection pool glimmering before him as his eyes latched onto hers.  
  
Frigga lit up from where she sat, just inside one of the arches that lead out to her balconies, her hand stilled with a cup of tea halfway to her mouth as she took him in, and he her. Her golden tresses and the up curve of her lips, her eyes slightly alarmed if a bit amused at his appearance.  
  
Her handmaidens paused in their morning movements to stare as he moved towards her in long strides.  
  
“Loki?” Frigga asked tentatively as he approached, amusement lightening her tone, “Darling, you’re not dressed.”  
  
He fell to his knees before her, bowing towards her until his head laid in her lap, hands moving to clench at her skirts like a tired child. He breathed out in relief, a light laugh making his body shudder.  
  
A gentle hand came to rest on his head, fingers moving through strands of dark hair, untangling the mess he had not cared to alter.  
  
“_Loki_,” the Queen murmured, worry colouring her voice. She lifted his head, cupping his face as she peered into his eyes. A tear escaped against his will, gifting her a watery smile that did nothing to assuage her worry. “What’s this? You look pale, are you ill?”  
  
He shook his head, hands coming up to hold hers in place, closing his eyes and sighing aloud.  
  
Frigga looked to her handmaidens, subtly motioning her head towards the door in silent dismissal. The women curtsied quickly and followed her direction, closing the door behind them as they went.  
  
The Queen of Asgard looked back down to her youngest son, taking in his state and coming to the conclusion that it was indeed _her_ Loki despite his unpolished appearance.  
  
She couldn’t recall him ever leaving his rooms in recent years looking so vulnerable. A pang of worry coursed through her once again.  
  
“Loki, what is wrong?” she asked quietly, her thumbs smoothing over his cheeks.  
  
He shook his head again, eyes opening to look blearily up at her, an emotion she had not seen on him since he was a child breaking through his gaze. It left her heart aching.  
  
“Nothing,” he told her suddenly, pulling away gently and taking her hands in his, squeezing them. He laughed lightly again, “I just – I just had a _really_ bad dream. The kind that just seems to go on forever.”  
  
“Oh, Loki,” Frigga sighed endearingly, shaking her head and smiling down at him. “You’re awake now.”  
  
“I am aren’t I?” he said letting go of her hands and pushing himself from the ground.  
  
“Nightmares sometimes hold on to us unfortunately,” she continued as he took the seat across from her, looking out over the view her own balconies held.  
  
“You have no idea,” he snorted, running a hand through his hair in an effort to flatten it.  
  
“Stay with me a while, tea? I take it you haven’t eaten,” she offered, pleased when he relented with nary any pushing on her part. She called towards the doors, a head of red curls popping in expectantly. “Dagny, tea please, and perhaps some pastries.”  
  
Dagny bobbed her head before disappearing once more.  
  
Loki did not take any notice, breathing in deeply as his mother continued to study him.  
  
“Would you like to talk about it? Sometimes dreams hold more meaning then we think, especially ones so vivid.”  
  
“No,” Loki answered instantly, flicking his hand idly. “It’s fading already.”  
  
Frigga narrowed her eyes but let him keep his silence, for now.  
  
“I’ve never seen you so rattled,” she said instead, looking again to his attire.  
  
He followed her gaze, having the decency to look abashed.  
  
“I acted rather rashly once I woke. Couldn’t quite tell what was real and what was not. Then my feet reacted for me and led me here.”  
  
“I haven’t seen you like this since you were a child,” she pondered fondly.  
  
“Not in front of others at least,” he said.  
  
“Not even me?”  
  
He took note of the hurt in her voice, sighing as her handmaiden returned, carrying a tray with a set of cups and teapot, a small plate of pastries on the side.  
  
“I never wanted you to worry,” he told her as Dagny placed the tray on the table between them, moving the cups into their proper position and removing Frigga’s previous cup before leaving the room once more with a small curtsy.  
  
Frigga watched her go, before looking back to her young son as he grabbed a pastry and bit off a large mouthful.  
  
She raised an eyebrow, “This is also the most open you’ve been with me in a long while.”  
  
“And you worry because of it,” Loki replied around a mouthful. “A vicious cycle.”  
  
Frigga hummed as she poured out the tea, “Perhaps a trip to Eir wouldn’t go amiss, just for a small check-up.”  
  
“If that’s what you want,” he said, bringing the cup of tea up to his mouth, offering her a calming smile. “I’ll go see Eir.”  
  
Frigga narrowed her eyes again at his tone, “No you won’t.”  
  
His smile grew, “Caught me.”  
  
She shook her head, rolling her eyes lightly while sipping from her own cup.  
  
“It was just a dream,” he continued after his own sips. “Nothing to worry about, I’ve got it under control.”  
  
“You are _so_ strange today.”  
  
“Just today?”  
  
“Funny,” she murmured. “Have you seen Thor?”  
  
“Not of late,” he answered, picking up another pastry and demolishing it. “What has he been up to?”  
  
She shrugged, “Oh, you know your brother.”  
  
“Probably squabbling in the arena with his band, going on expeditions to bring back the head of some creature, saving a damsel here and there,” Loki copied her shrug. “Basic Thor things.”  
  
She hid a smile, taking note of his snark, “I worry he’s not focusing his energies into his studies, his coronation comes so soon.”  
  
“Does it?” he questioned.  
  
Frigga laughed taking his response as sarcasm, “I suppose it’s been all you hear about lately.”  
  
Loki hummed, trying to recall the time before Thor’s ascendance, “Perhaps a touch.”  
  
His mother smiled at him, hand reaching out to his own resting now on the table.  
  
“At least he will have you to help him through this, advising his actions and supporting him. He will need all of our support in his transition.”  
  
Her younger son smiled tightly, letting his hand slip out of hers.  
  
“An honour, I’m sure.”   


* * *

After finishing his tea and demolishing the rest of the pastries, much to the bemusement of his mother, Loki left her to her day, content that she was indeed alive and well, and would be for as long as Loki deemed it so.   
  
He had no intention of playing along and letting certain events run its course this time around.  
  
After all, surely there was a reason he had been thrown back, a meaning behind this intervention.  
  
He walked at a much slower pace back to his rooms, pondering his options as he got dressed in proper day attire, choosing items he had once favoured. Interlocking wraps of leather, the tailored fit of green. It had always been his chosen style, but now it felt open on him, as though there weren’t enough straps and layers to keep him together.  
  
He did not stick around his own rooms for long, eager to see what else had changed, or more correctly, what had not yet come to pass.  
  
He moved quickly past the throne room, having not been that long since he had kept court here under the guise of Odin, and he wasn’t particularly in a rush to be reintroduced to the Allfather.  
  
His feelings on Odin were still muddled, he still didn’t quite know what to think about him and where they stood. He didn’t have to in the other timeline, Odin was gone before he got a chance to figure out what it was he wanted.  
  
Gone and replaced by Hela.  
  
And oh, wasn’t _that_ a thought?  
  
He stashed that particular card away for later, it would come handy at a later time no doubt.   
  
He paused in an alcove, hearing the tell-tale sign of clashing weapons, of rowdy movement and jeers. He stepped out onto the balcony where Odin would often watch the Einherjar train, often along with his sons standing by him or fighting down in the grounds themselves.  
  
He looked down at the fields now, watching the best warriors Asgard had to offer and an all too familiar figure move about, locked in his own combat.  
  
He knew he shouldn’t be surprised by Thor’s youthfulness but it hit him like a kick to the stomach all the same.  
  
His brother laughs as he dodges what may have been a critical hit from one of the soldiers, moving his own weapon to push back against the attack. Mjolnir sings in the air from the contact and Loki can’t help but smile, the memory of Hela crushing the damned hammer in her fist rushing back to him.  
  
He wonders idly if he could learn to do so too, but he was never a master of the weapon so perhaps such a feat was beyond his means.  
  
He leaned against the balustrade, watching his brother with little interest, a million thoughts passing through him as he contemplated why he had been sent back and not his heroic brother.  
  
He tried to imagine what that would have been like, what Thor would have done in his place and already knows the answer without even giving it a minute.  
  
He knows Thor would have embraced this as a gift, a chance to right the wrongs.  
  
He would have known of Loki’s plot to thwart his coronation, would have known about Loki’s parentage, and would probably have tried to mend their relationship before any of that ever happened.  
  
And at this point in time, Loki's younger self would have swallowed up the attention like a fine wine.  
  
His brother was full of sentiment. Though that sentiment had slowly faded until he could no longer deal with Loki’s coldness, cope with every betrayal, every hurt he inflicted.  
  
_You really are the worst brother_.  
  
It wiped the smirk off Loki's face.  
  
Thor would have forgave him eventually, he always did, and Loki really did plan to try harder that time around, his efforts had just been cut short.  
  
He shook his head and moved down the balcony, descending the stairs down into the training ground to continue his observations.  
  
“Anyone else?” Thor cawed as his training partner departed the field, hobbling slightly. Onlookers shook their heads in fond bemusement at their soon to be King, forever adored by the masses, the _perfect_ Asgardian.  
  
Loki had long thought he had gotten over this aspect of his life, the bitter feeling of not being enough for anyone coursing through him annoyingly. It did not seem to matter how much he wanted to grow away from it, it always remained a fact.  
  
He was different and painfully so.  
  
At least he knew now why that was.  
  
Thor continued to call across the fields.  
  
“Anyone? No?”  
  
“I think you’ve battered your way through Asgard’s finest Thor,” Fandral called from his own fight, Thor laughed in response, cockily Loki thought. He had forgotten this particular laugh.  
  
“Will I do?”  
  
Thor turned to meet his gaze, his smile falling before picking back up in an even brighter one. Loki squinted against it, but knew inwardly that he had somewhat missed being on the receiving end of his brother’s obnoxious grins.  
  
“Brother!” Thor all but yelled as Loki approached, “How odd to see you in the daylight, and without a book to block out the sun either, are you ill?”  
  
Loki gifted him a tight smirk, “Well enough Thor, but any more of your showing off will leave me feeling sickly.”  
  
“Showing off?” Thor repeated in what Loki would swear was a defensive tone.  
  
“Oh no, you didn’t know?” Loki cooed innocently whilst dodging a swipe from Thor’s hand, the older smiling playfully.  
  
“Someone has been sharpening his tongue today.”  
  
Loki moved a few paces away, conjuring his long daggers, “Shall we?”  
  
The blond grinned, twirling Mjolnir and getting into his starting stance as Loki got into his.  
  
The first round Loki found almost too easy, dodging Mjolnir with a practiced ease, getting in hits he would not have gotten in if not for years of surviving on his own.  
  
It surprised him how much one could change in less than ten years. His own skills had been refined over that time, back when he was constantly fighting for his life.  
  
Thor’s moves were sloppier, which was something Loki could not admit to lightly, because his brother’s fighting had always been superior. At least when Loki could not use his magic to aid him.  
  
“Where did you learn that?” Thor spat around a mouthful of dirt as Loki released his hold on him, moving back so Thor could get back up, wiping the dust off his front.  
  
“Perhaps it was from the book that blocks out the sun,” Loki replied lightly, blowing out a fallen strand of hair from his face.  
  
Thor scoffed, “You’ve almost inspired me to read willingly.”  
  
“Oh no Thor, we wouldn’t want you to waste your last brain cell.”  
  
The older of the two gaped at him, an offended fury washing his features as he charged towards Loki once more.  
  
Mjolnir came down on the cross of Loki’s enchanted daggers, the younger man’s body jolting at the impact but staying upright as he pushed back against the assault, twisting his body out of the way and kicking out a leg in a manoeuvre he had sadly learnt from one of Thanos’ children.  
  
Thor fell again, but did not stay down long enough for Loki to bend him into submission, instead spinning on his knee and swinging Mjolnir out towards his brother. Loki dodged it with next to no effort, using the moment to throw his daggers out and catch Thor’s cape, staking it to the ground and making Thor fall to the ground yet again.  
  
The thunder god let out an irritable yell, ripping his cape in the process of getting back up.  
  
Loki watched fondly as Thor fumbled, taking a moment to look around at the gathering crowd, coming to a realisation that _he_ was now the one showing off.  
  
Thor ran at him once again, Mjolnir raised and swiping through empty space as Loki ducked. He rolled over to the daggers embedded into the ground and the remnants of Thor’s red cape.  
  
He pulled them out easily, enchanted to his touch as Mjolnir was to Thor’s, and spun them professionally as he twisted back around. He fought off each of Thor’s violent blows, before dodging once again and slipping out of Thor’s reach, grabbing the back of his brother’s collar and slamming him to the ground once again.  
  
Mjolnir fell from Thor’s hand at the impact and once again allowed Loki the honour of restraining his brother, his knee digging into Thor’s lower back as the elder squirmed beneath him once more.  
  
“How are you doing that?” the god grunted in frustration as Loki released him once more.  
  
“You keep giving me the same opening,” Loki admitted, dusting off his own clothes.  
  
“Where? When?”  
  
“I’m not your teacher,” Loki replied. “One more?”  
  
Thor nodded, his brow scrunched in a scowl.  
  
The last round went much the same way, with Thor on the ground and Loki digging a knee into his back. At least this time Thor had managed to get one good swing in, knocking Loki back half an acre, but it was short lived, Loki still found an opening and brought Thor down.  
  
_Small victories_, he could not help but think.  
  
If this were the older Thor he would have learnt by now what his mistake was and ensure not to repeat it. This Thor was still too rash, too impulsive.  
  
“Had enough?” Loki asked as Thor wriggled against his grip. “You’re exhausting yourself.”  
  
“You’re cheating,” Thor grunted out around another mouthful of dirt.  
  
“I win some rounds and suddenly I’m a cheat? That’s very sore of you brother,” Loki admonished, digging his knee in a bit deeper and taking glee in the high sound of discomfort his brother released. “What trickery would I be using to best you?”  
  
Thor remained silent beneath him, his writhing slowing as Loki bent down to whisper into his ear. “You don’t even understand enough of what I do to even be allowed to question it.”  
  
He released Thor and got back up, letting his brother get back on his own feet without any assistance.  
  
Thor looked at him oddly, opening his mouth to say something before closing it.  
  
Loki raised an eyebrow at his inner turmoil, obviously unsure of how to react at what his younger brother had just so vehemently spat in his ear.  
  
“One more time,” Thor demanded instead.  
  
Loki shook his head, “How about I just tell you what you’re doing wrong.”  
  
Thor looked like he wanted to bite back at that, but nodded in affirmation.  
  
“You favour your right too much,” the younger said, pointing to Thor’s left side. “It’s your weaker side, so all I have to do is keep aiming for it, keeping completely away from your right. I’m not saying it’s weak, just that it’s not as strong as your right. You’re not acting fast enough when I dodge your attack, each time I was able to slip under your left when you should have expected I’d do the same move, because that was the same move I used each time.”  
  
Thor still looked put out, less angry and a bit more abashed.  
  
He nodded slowly, looking around at the small crowd who took that moment to disperse, a small chorus of oblivious whistling singing out as soldiers went back to their drills.  
  
The thunderer looked back to his brother, frowning deeply as Loki picked up his fallen daggers, conjuring them away with little notice of Thor’s inner conflict.  
  
“You best me three times over and you don’t even look pleased,” Thor observed, calling Mjolnir back to him. “You even ruined my cape.”  
  
“Pretty sure _you’re_ the one who ruined your cape,” Loki replied with a huff, grabbing the trampled material and frowning at the torn edges. “I’m afraid it’s seen its last venture. Good thing you have a hundred others.”  
  
Thor continued to look displeased.  
  
“Internally I’m _very_ smug, trust me,” Loki allowed him, smirking. “I’ll never let you forget this day.”  
  
That seemed enough to appease his brother whose frown finally broke into a wide smile, laughing loudly before slapping a large hand onto his brother’s back.  
  
“You must spar with me more,” Thor told him, “I’ve missed you on these grounds. I don’t know what you do with yourself cooped up in your rooms all the time.”  
  
Loki bit back a retort.  
  
He dearly wished to tell Thor that if he had been a more observant brother he would have realised Loki did not spend all his days ‘cooped’ up in his rooms, but rather spent them exploring the boundaries of Asgard.  
  
Often he would take one of the horses or land cruisers out next to every day, exploring invisible portals leading to other realms. It was difficult work, and the Loki of young had slaved over endless books to even get a gist of where these gateways were or might lead.  
  
In possibly a week’s time the original Loki would find the gateway to Jotunheim where his growing plot would start to take form.  
  
A plot that would no longer take place.  
  
Thor continued to look at him expectantly, not cuing in to the fact that Loki was lost in a deep spiral of thoughts.  
  
He shook his head lightly, trying to clear his mind from the barrage.  
  
“Perhaps,” he allowed Thor instead, which was enough for the blond whose smile grew, if possible, even wider. Loki gave him a small smile back, turning away to leave the grounds, knowing he was content in Thor’s ever living presence as well.  
  
The two people he cared the most for were alive and well.  
  
Young and naïve in their safety of this realm, not yet aware of the dangers and tragedy they would face.  
  
He looked around at the Asgardian soldiers, at the spectators hanging on the sidelines, the women and children born in a golden realm.  
  
Far more than half of them do not live to see the future.  
  
Even more so if Thanos’ plans succeeded.  
  
Loki’s hand comes up to touch his neck, the phantom ache growing uncomfortable the more he thought about what Thanos would be capable of if he gained all stones.  
  
He sighed, certain he would not have been given this second chance if Thanos had lost.  
  
He thought then that he wanted nothing more than to sleep.  
  
And eat.  
  
Soon he would have to start planning once again.  
  
Not to thwart Thor’s ascension to the throne this time, but to stop the death of millions of innocents. He wasn’t going to fool himself, he didn’t truly care for the lives of most of them, but the idea that he could prevent it was the only reason he could think of as to why he was here.  
  
Save them, save Asgard, save Thor.  
  
He groaned against a growing headache.  
  
Time was a very fickle thing.  
  
He walked back up the steps to the viewing platform, pausing at the top as he came face to face with the last person he wished to deal with today.  
  
The Allfather watched him, hand resting on the banister where a crow rustled its feathers, hopping along the edge, seemingly watching him as well with its beady eyes.  
  
“Loki,” Odin greeted.  
  
Loki took less than a second to compose himself into the blank slate he had perfected so well, quirking his lips slightly on his own greeting.  
  
“Allfather.”  
  
Odin raised an eyebrow in what Loki could only guess was amusement, before motioning to the spot beside him, “Will you not keep me company?”  
  
Loki looked towards the alcove entrance which also happened to be his exit point.  
  
“I don’t want to distract you from your,-” he hesitated before settling on, “- work.”  
  
Odin smiled softly, splaying his hand to his side, “I am not working.”  
  
“Is a King not always at work,” Loki replied, trying to keep a teasing tone to his voice. “What were you thinking of before I stepped into your sight?”  
  
“That I should find my youngest son and talk with him a bit,” the old God answered, a teasing tone in his own voice.  
  
Loki frowned, he didn’t remember Odin seeking him out before Thor’s coronation. In fact he couldn’t quite recall the last conversation he and the King of Asgard had had before that fateful day. The day everything fell to Hel.  
  
Loki dropped his hands, realising he was tapping on his palm, a known nervous tic he had adopted from Frigga. Odin took note of it.  
  
Loki sighed before moving to Odin’s side, “Can I help you with something?”  
  
“This is not an interrogation Loki,” the old god sighed, turning his body towards the palace entrance. “Come let us walk for a while.”  
  
Loki did as he was bid, keeping in step with the old King and trying not to let his emotions get the better of him. He bit his tongue as they walked the corridors of the palace and clasped his hands behind his back in an act of stoicism, lest he start fidgeting again.  
  
“You’ve been busy of late,” Odin said suddenly.  
  
Loki had to blink, trying to recall what the Loki of Before had been doing around this time and realising perhaps his day trips had not gone as unnoticed as he had once hoped.  
  
That or Frigga had urged Odin to talk to him, which was probably more likely than the former.  
  
“Thought this wasn’t an interrogation,” Loki replied to which Odin sighed tiredly.  
  
“I’m starting to believe all talk between a parent and their child is some form of interrogation I’m afraid. I am curious of your activities, I haven’t seen you as often and your mother has expressed concern for your health.”  
  
Loki wanted to laugh, suppressing the manic bubble trying to force itself out.  
  
He pursed his lips tightly because yes, of course, Odin didn’t really care about his activities or his well-being, not unless pressed upon by his Queen.  
  
Loki quenched that old feeling of neglect. It was something he had trained himself to grow out of when it came to Odin. Apparently not enough. Odin always could make him become his worst self, just his presence made him want to cut himself open.  
  
“I am fine,” Loki answered instead, unclenching his teeth to do so.  
  
Odin frowned despite the smooth delivery, pausing in his walk and reaching out to halt Loki’s own steps.  
  
“And physically you seem it, but something weighs on you,” the old king observed staring into Loki’s eyes as though trying to rip answers from them with his own. How he did this with one eye was always beyond Loki’s understanding. “I wish to help you if you would let me.”  
  
Loki blinked.  
  
His father was offering help. His father was standing before him offering aid.  
  
His heart ached for the original Loki of this timeline who would have vied for this sort of attention.  
  
To think all he had to do was run around in his sleep attire and claim a nightmare for the King of Asgard to give him even a moment of light.  
  
Of course it was always too good to be true, as Odin continued and quashed the almost appreciative emotion washing over Loki.  
  
“We need you to be ready to help Thor into his ascension,” the King continued, walking once more and leaving Loki to stand and stare into the space he had been.  
  
He wanted to yell something obscene.  
  
All those past hurts coming back, his whole life focused around being Thor’s crutch, the advisor to Thor’s unlistening ears. He wanted to howl after his father. Wanted him to understand why, what he had just said, had the ability to make his skin _crawl._  
  
Instead he straightened himself up and called after his father, “If only he would listen.”  
  
Odin looked back at him, steps slowing as Loki caught up.  
  
“Your brother still has a lot to learn. He will not be the perfect King, not at first, but in time, and with much patience,” Odin told him, smiling lightly. “He will make me proud.”  
  
“I’m sure he will,” Loki replied honestly, “but don’t go falling into a sleep just yet.”  
  
Odin chuckled, “What an odd thing to say.”  
  
Loki wanted to roll his eyes.  
  
“Is that all?” he asked hoping to be dismissed. The old king frowned, continuing his walk and motioning Loki to follow still.  
  
“So eager to get beyond my sight.”  
  
“I know other things we both rather be doing.”  
  
“Do we?”  
  
“You can tell mother I’m okay, you can tell her we had a nice big talk and everything was resolved if you wish,” Loki offered, hoping the Allfather would take this opening as the offer of escape it was.  
  
“I do not wish,” Odin replied instead, wrinkle in his brow deepening further. “You moved well in the grounds today, some of the moves you pulled I don’t quite recall any of your trainers practicing.”  
  
“They didn’t,” he admitted, clenching his hands. “I learnt on my own merit.”  
  
“When?”  
  
“Over time. Can’t reveal all my secrets can I?”  
  
“I don’t recall you revealing any,” Odin countered.  
  
“I didn’t cheat if that’s what you’re implying,” Loki replied hotly, too hot as Odin once against paused in his walk to look Loki in the eyes, wrinkle still marring his forehead and eye narrowing as he looked deeply into his younger sons own. Loki supressed the urge to squirm underneath it.  
  
All these years and more and still he feared his father’s full attention, and coveted it all the same.  
  
“Your mother is right,” Odin said after a few breaths. “You are far more open then you’ve been in years. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.”  
  
He placed one hand on the shoulder of his curious son.  
  
“So I feel I must ask again Loki, father to son,” the old king continued, nothing but honest concern lacing his tone, and with enough command behind it to remind Loki just who he was talking to. “Are you well?”  
  
The younger man shared him with a light smile, stepping out of his grasp with a certain gentility.  
  
“I’ll let you know,” he allowed, gifting Odin with the slightest of genuine smiles, before moving away in long strides, eager to be away from this topic and away from the man he could not decide how to feel about.  
  
“I can’t help you if you don’t let me in,” Odin called after him, not moving to follow.  
  
“I’ve got it covered,” Loki replied over his shoulder, not bothering to look back before making a flippant gesture in the air, letting his seidr whisk him away in a swathe of green.


	2. one step ahead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was supposed to update last night but the pull of sleep was too strong. Thanks for reading!  
This chapter is more thinking time on Loki's part and jumping straight into action, not a lot of character interaction so apologies, next chapter is nothing but. I promise.

The hardest part was figuring out where to start.

Like any plan, he supposed, but this one required a certain amount of memory to rely on, memory only he could look back too.

The books in the library did nothing in helping him learn what he already knew. He could read into the lines but he already knew what he had to do.

Find the stones before Thanos.

_Destroy_ the stones.

He rested his forehead on the desk in the library, one hidden out of the way between the many stacks of Asgard’s Hall of Literature. Books and notes splayed out in front of him, words all becoming a blur.

The books could not help him track down the missing infinity stones.  
  
It had taken Thanos years of searching before even acquiring the mind stone.  
  
The stone which had been on Midgard last Loki had checked, at least, in the other life he had left.

He lifted his head back up, staring down at his scribbled notes.

_Mind stone._ It would probably be with Thanos by now, he had to imagine. After all the Titan had had it when the defeated god had fallen into his grasp.

It felt so long ago and yet all too fresh, the year of torture he had faced under the hand of the purple monstrosity and his equally monstrous children, all taking turns in breaking and moulding him, until he was nothing but a puppet to the Titan’s will.

The pen in his hand snapped. He threw the broken instrument onto the table, removing the spilled ink with a wave of his hand.  
  
The mind stone could wait.  
  
The reality stone however was completely in his grasp thanks to the discovery made by, no other, than the mortal Jane Foster. It would be easy enough to achieve its retrieval, whether or not it would wake the dark elves was another matter altogether.

He had looked through the Book of Yggdrasil the day before, under the watchful eye of its guard who took his perusing as a personal insult, huffing every time a page was turned. Loki cared not.

He had read the book thoroughly before in his youth, learnt of its contents in many classes and lessons, going as far back to when he and Thor were in the palace creche.

The birth of the nine realms had all but been hammered into him as a child.

_From out of the cold darkness of the universe came forth the first dawn of light. Born of a spark of golden energy the ethereal light filled the far reaches of the universe. The majesty of the immaculate Aurora heralded the creation of the Nine Realms and banished all the dark creatures to the voids of obscurity as the golden warmth nurtured the sparks of light._

He could continue, but he had long grown over Asgard’s arrogance to really believe the tales they had spun to make the realm sound like they were the beacon of ingenuity.

_…the realms will always be bathed in the glorious light radiating from the mighty Asgard and from the gods._

He snorted flicking the page, earning him a glower from the warden he chose not to acknowledge.

How unfortunate no one could join him in his dark humour, the Valkyrie would have, were she here. The warrior had exiled herself to the clutter of Sakaar to escape ‘mighty Asgard’ and all the bloodshed she and the rest of the people had been bathed in under Hela’s bloodlust.

He missed her, he realised, having grown closer to her in their time on the Statesman. Drowning themselves together in their own self-pity in one of the many unused bars on the vessel.  
  
He flipped through to the pages based upon the Svartalfhar, not yet ready to think about the life he had left behind, still unready to think of how his Thor would have fared in the aftermath of his death.

The dark elves moved across the pages like paper dolls, their white masked faces and hollow eyes sending a chill down his spine. They existed prior to the manifestation in the universe, Malekith engineering the Aether into a super weapon forged from the substance permeating and surrounding the universe before it came into being. Bor fought in the war and drove them back-

Loki flicked to the next page growing increasingly bored.

-the Aether was lost to Malekith, taken by the Asgardians and the universe lived to see the light of a new day.

Loki tapped his fingers where the story stopped, not revealing anything about whether it was the convergence that wakes the Dark Elves or the removal of the stone, or the magnitude of both. And whether the stone could be removed before the convergence started rearing its head, an event that was two years away now.  
  
The young god looked back down at his pages in the library.

He still felt the reality stone was perhaps the best place to start, unprotected and forgotten as it was.  
  
The tesseract was on Midgard, gateway for his arrival in a year’s time. He wondered idly who would be sent in his place for the domination of Midgard. Would they do a better job than he had? In retrospect he had done quite poorly, his heart had not truly been in the fight and his mind was completely addled by his treatment under both Thanos and the mind stone. His pain and his anger had been brought to their limits, so much so that he could not think clearly about his actions and the consequences they presented.

He felt a particular bond with the space stone and wondered perhaps that the feeling stemmed from his time in the void when he had been surrounded in nothing but.

Loki frowned against that particular memory, recalling the feeling of falling, the way it had stretched him out and tore him apart, the pain and the silence. His memory was not complete concerning the time he spent drifting through tumultuous space. One moment he had felt his body dying, and the next he was waking up in the hands of a purple Titan.

But he remembered the pain.

He always did.

He had the deepest suspicion he had died in the void, just as he had died impaled by Kurse, just as he had died when Thanos-

The tesseract was safe for now, he had a year to sort that particular stone out, and if he played his cards right, he would obtain the mind stone along with it in one fell swoop.

Which left the unknown whereabouts of the power stone, the time stone and the soul stone.

He sighed aloud, shuffling his papers together before whisking them away into his pocket dimension, where he kept his most prized artefacts until they were conjured again once more.

He closed up the books, dithering on whether to leave them for the staff to put away, or to simply do it himself. He chose to do it himself lest they start observing his readings, not that he was afraid that they would accumulate enough information on what he was doing, but if they passed it down to the Allfather, whom he felt was spending far more time looking his way of late, then it could make for another awkward consultation.

It was his own fault he supposed, going to Frigga the first chance he got was probably the worst mistake he could have made.

There was a reason he had cut himself off to her in the first place, before he fell.

Letting his feelings and thoughts known had always managed to end with the Queen looking at him in something akin to pity. So he had made sure not to be as open, supressing his growing emotions and anxieties down, simply painted a sharp smile on his face instead and relied on wit and dry humour to cope.

Like he was doing now.

Some things never change.

So he _may_ have been avoiding the royal family.

He knew they lived and that was enough, he could save them all with his knowledge alone. He didn’t need their help, he didn’t need them to worry and poke, and they would.

Fortunately for him they were less than a whole season off from Thor’s coronation and the palace was bustling in preparation. His parents were occupied with other things, ambassadors from other realms would be in attendance, political figureheads ready to observe the courts and question their loyalties, were something to go amiss. It had been a trying time then and it was a trying time now for both the Queen and King.

_And_, Loki thought, _the Allfather is about to collapse into a long sleep at any moment._

He wondered if it would be longer than the two day streak he had slept in his original timeline. Odin had been rushed for time then, waking up to save his sons from falling into the void. Well, he had saved the more important one he supposed.

He slid a book back into its allocated slot a bit roughly then he would have normally.

Odin wouldn’t fall into his sleep the same way again. Loki had no intention of bringing up his adoption and getting into a match of emotions.

He liked to think he was over it now and that his years posing as Odin had helped him come to the fact that the blood of a frozen monster ran through him. But he knew it was still there, he knew that the anger still bubbled in him, daring to spill over at any moment.  
  
All of Asgard had known in that timeline. He made sure of it in the plays he had put on, dramatic and a bit self-indulgent they may have been, but the people had seemed to enjoy them nonetheless.

They knew he was Jotun, and while they seemed to take on the information in good faith when they thought he had died in a gallant cause, he found it hard to believe they would be so accepting now.

The Thor of now was... busy being Thor.

His brother had not attempted to seek him out since the training grounds his first day here, a week had passed since, but much had happened the same in the original time. Thor grew increasingly obnoxious the closer his coronation grew, and Loki plotted in the shadows.

A pang of loss hit Loki once again, knowing that his brother would grow to become a much better man than he was today, and that all that development had been lost to him.

Loki was curious to see how an unpunished Thor would fare as King now that it was unlikely Odin would see fit to banish him. There would be no attack on Jotunheim this time, no one to banish and no one to unveil a long kept secret.

He placed the last book back in its spot, eyes lingering on the back of his hand.

Blue did not paint his skin there, it hadn’t since that day so long ago, or in another case, so near. It was not something he wanted to see again.

So no, perhaps he was not as ‘over it’ as he liked to make out.

It was, however, something he had learned to deal with.  
  


* * *

  
  
He wasted no time in figuring out if the Aether were beyond his means, seeming like the most logical stone to attempt to have in his grasp first.

Jane Foster had discovered its whereabouts from a portal on Midgard, holes in space weakened by the oncoming convergence which would also wake Malekith and the Dark Elves from their deep stasis.

He did not know of all the portals on Asgard, just the ones he had needed to for his own plotting. Jotunheim was in the caves to the far west, Svartalfheim in the canyon he had taken Thor and Jane to when avenging their mother’s death.

She wouldn’t die this time, Loki knew. Not by the Svartalfar, and not by defending a mere mortal her son coveted.

Did he blame Jane?

No more than he had blamed himself, locked up and useless, hidden in the depths of Asgard. He had, by choice, given up valuable information to Kurse which had then lead to Frigga’s murder, after all.  
  
He still did not like the mortal though.

Midgard’s portal would be to the valley not too far from the palace walls, and another known in Svartalfheim and discovered, shockingly, by Thor and the mortal. The nearness of the convergence seemed to create portals at every possible interval it seemed. He would not be so lucky this time around, not if he wanted to find it before such events took place.

Alfheim and Vanaheims own pockets were not too far from one another, one hidden behind the Great Waterfalls of the Forests of Kari, and the other less than a day’s journey to the east.

He had not bothered beyond those five portals, most of them found by mistake in his efforts to find Jotunheim’s own in the year leading up to Thor’s coronation. He was surprised by the amount of pockets he had discovered, and the multitude of realms opened up to him, but sabotaging Thor’s ascension was all that had filled Loki’s mind those days.

So what information did he have on the Reality stone’s whereabouts?

Bor had hidden it in a pocket dimension, Jane had come across a portal in the Midgardian city of London which would then lead her to finding the Aether writhing to get out of its container.

Loki would have to find a concealment strong enough to hold it once recovered, something similar to the one he had given Sif and the Warriors Three to send off to Nowhere. That particular item he had taken from Odin’s personal stores though.

He could try to make one of his own, but there was no guarantee it would be a suitable prison for the stone.  
  
There was also no way Odin would not notice someone stealing from the armoury either, not from his personal stores set up with spells and barriers that rivalled Loki’s own. He vaguely remembered an incident when he and Thor were young boys, curiosity getting the best of them as it often did, followed with a talking down by Odin… as it often did.

Which came to the big conclusion that he was having trouble dealing with.  
  
To stop Thanos, he _had_ to leave Asgard.

To make sure his family were out of harm’s way, he had to _leave_ Asgard.

He thought it would be easier this time, but he knew that the thought was only a blanket to smother his growing trepidation. He was only lying to himself.  
  
Because he was not leaving angry this time, he wasn’t leaving in grief, in betrayal, or from a dying realm.

This realm was intact.

Frigga was here.

The beloved, golden Queen of Asgard, tending to her gardens, weaving her tapestries, advising Odin to not be so brash in his doings, worrying for her sons in doing the same, she was _alive._

And Loki loved her, despite her complicity in hiding his heritage with Odin, for not being there for him when he had needed her most. He loved her still despite her crimes against him, marred as they were. He knew now to hold on to the little he had, if not simply to keep him sane.

And he would much rather have her alive than the bitter memory they shared together before she was taken from him completely.

So he would leave her here, alive and whole. Upset at his departure perhaps, but he’d make sure not to appear dead this time around for her sake. They’d all be better off without him anyway he was sure.

Odin would not care too much, he thought. He was soon for the Odinsleep, and then Frigga would spend most of her days by his bedside.

Thor would be King this time, unhindered by intruding frost giants, an angry Father and a scheming brother. It would go according to plan without any issue. Loki was curious to see what Thor would make as King, having not had his short time on Midgard to make him see what an ass he was._ Is._

This Thor would not lose his hammer and he wouldn’t raid Jotunheim and he wouldn’t lose his brother.

Well, Loki wouldn’t be here, but he wouldn’t be thought both dead and disgraced.

So no, Loki truly did not want to leave so soon after arriving. He did not want to leave Frigga when he had just gotten her back, or leave Thor when he was still so impulsive and newly crowned.

Asgard did not know of his misdeeds, his actions or his heritage. He walked this hall as an esteemed member of the royal family, never the favourite prince, but still treated with the respect his position allowed him.

To leave this Asgard, with no true spite in his heart, would be the hardest thing he would have to do.

He didn’t know what his amendments would cause, and he didn’t know what the future presented for them, but he knew it had to be better than the one he had left behind.

_It had to be._

Less than a fortnight from Thor’s coronation Loki set out with one thing in mind.

Find the Reality Stone.

He left early in the morning before the light of day could crest the hills, only the kitchen staff awake prepping for the day’s duties and kneading dough to begin their baking. He had taken some food from the hall the night before, bread rolls and roasted meats wrapped up in fabric for his journey.  
  
His appetite had yet to cease. Normally he could go days without eating, now he felt as though he were eating for Volstaag and the rest of the warriors put together.

This had not gone unnoticed by the band, who had watched him in some amusement as he sat with them, scoffing down large amounts of food before bidding them farewell, all the while having ignored their conversations which remained just as mundane now as it had in his memory.

He did feel for them, knowing they had all been cut down by Hela quite cruelly. Not able to put up much of a fight for lack of foresight. He had overheard Heimdall speak of them to Thor upon the Statesman, how Hogun was the last to go but had had the most to say.

Their deaths were not fitting, Loki decided, but he wasn’t as broken about it as Thor had been. After all, he knew where their loyalties had and would always lie. And it would never be with him.

He could attempt to mend it, he supposed, his ties to them, but it wasn’t really something he was concerned with. After all at the end of the day, they didn’t like him and he didn’t particularly like them.

Loki just knew that for all the good they had done, to be cut down so easily, it simply did not sit well with him. Possibly because he felt his own death at Thanos’ hands was also unfitting for him.

All his deaths had been unsubstantial in his opinion, but Thanos breaking his neck like he was nothing but a chicken? That truly made the worst blow.  
  
His neck still ached every time he thought about it and having to take in deep breaths to remind himself that the danger was gone for now, but to be more vigilant in future. He had been buying time for Thor then. This time Thor would not have the honour of meeting the Titan, not if Loki had anything to say about it.  
  
He chose to go by horse, so if anyone was wondering of his whereabouts there would be a seemingly innocent trail to follow. He could have teleported, but his Mother was smart and could follow strains of seidr if she felt like it, it was better to simply go as the younger Loki would have.

He took off on the steed at a fast pace, able to navigate the empty streets of Asgard before taking to the roads that would lead him out further into the realms natural elements.

He and Thor had practically lived out here in their youths, the elder dragging the younger along on hunting expeditions or else a call to arms from a smaller village about some beast or wicked thing plaguing their land.

Those days were behind them now, try as Thor may to be in the midst of battle. As King he would realise that it was not going to be himself to be sent out to save damsels and settlements, and that he couldn’t just take off with his Warriors Three and Sif to fight the evils of the realms.

Loki wished he could be around to see that particular tantrum.

Just as the sun touched the earth in glorious golden hues, Loki parked his horse in one of the village stables where a younger boy was already tending to the horses there, fumbling under Loki’s approach in recognition. Loki had given him coins and the reigns to the steed, before setting out once again, this time on foot.

The gate to Midgard was not much further from here, but the terrain in the valley was steep, and the portal up high. It had taken a lot of effort the first time Loki had been trying to track it down, a compass in his hand, the spell he had cast on it guiding him to his prize.

He wondered then if he should teleport, but was cowed again by the thought of Frigga or Odin going in search of him, both today and when he would eventually depart Asgard. Magic left prints, and if you knew what you were looking for than it could just as easily be revealed.  
Both Odin and Frigga had the means to do such a thing, and they would easily follow it up to where the portal hid and come to their own conclusions and assumptions.

He stepped over fallen logs and pushed up over the steep inclines, both fallen leaves and mud making it harder than it had to be. And surely enough there it was, after a good hour of travelling mind you. A small group of tall rocks, almost monolithic in their appearance, appeared. He stopped to catch his breath before moving towards it.

He could feel it humming, it wasn’t something you could hear, but it had the ability to make the hairs on his arms stand on end, a shiver of electricity running down his back.

He didn’t dither, making quick work of promptly slipping through the rocks and into the narrow hiding space available.

The space grew before him as he took a few steps in, and soon he knew, without a doubt, that he was no longer in Asgard, no longer in the rocky structure he just stepped into. The light at the other end grew closer, and he stepped out into another forest similar to the one he had just left.

He smirked, unconcerned now with using his magic and allowed it to whisk him way.


	3. playing with fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so, again should have updated this like two days ago but real talk I've recently become a cat-mum and it's a lot more draining than expected, but cue me going to edit a chapter and getting caught up in kitten shenanigans. Anyway, here, take this before you go.

He came back to Asgard in dusk.   
  
Trudging once more through the tumultuous valley, finding himself too pleased to care much for the branches and twigs that stuck out and nicked at him as he went back down.   
  
It had not been easy. The Midgardian city of London had been bigger than expected, and the bewitched compass he had used to track the holes in space was muddled by the range of them available, so much so Loki had to further use his sorcery to focus on one at a time.   
  
He had found one in an abandoned, underground travel system the mortals had used, but it had led to a planet not of Loki’s knowledge, and he did not think Foster had the time to explore quite so thoroughly. The way Thor had described it at the time, the Midgardian had stepped into a wormhole after tracking it and found herself face to face with the Aether.   
  
He kicked himself for not probing further but at the time there had been no need for it, and he found he had not cared much either being concerned on avenging Frigga’s death.  
  
He had tried another in an abandoned power station in the east of London, but found that it only lead him back to Alfheim with its tell-tale lavender skies and many moons.   
  
He’d never felt as disappointed to see that sky as he did then, ready to see the vision of the trapped Aether. Fortunately his next stop gave a bigger boon.   
  
He wondered if the worm holes were created in isolation as every single one he had discovered so far had had no note of civilisation around it. They almost seemed to grow in the dark like fungus, untouched but for those who would seek them out.   
  
The portal in the industrial district was weaker than the others had been, hidden inside a rundown, abandoned factory that looked as though a strong wind could blow it over if it willed. He had to use some of his own seidr to strengthen its bounds, knowing he would be unable to get through unless he waited out the convergence until its walls grew.  
  
Once he had stepped through it he was greeted by the sight of dark stone, possibly volcanic and sheltering him from each side. It opened out into a larger clearing where the Aether glowed red before him, trapped by Bor’s own workings.   
  
He moved closer, careful not to get too close lest the power decided to attach itself to him. He thought again to Malekith waking, but at least when Loki would eventually take it, it would not lead the trail back to Asgard as Jane’s presence had.  
  
Loki left quickly after that, not keen on sticking around the prison and making his way back to Asgard. He could not help but smile, for his plans were taking shape finally, an infinity stone already in his reach and ready to be extracted.  
  
He returned to the palace stables at a leisurely pace, making sure to seem like he had simply gone for a ride amidst the city’s borders. It was not a surprise that Frigga was waiting for him in the stables, one hand rubbing uncomfortably at the other, a small smile lighting her face as she saw his return.  
  
He jumped down from the steed, passing the reigns over to the stable hand and moving fallen hair out of his eyes as he turned to greet her.   
  
“Mother.”  
  
“Loki,” she answered back, her hands stilling. “Fair travels?”  
  
“The weather was well enough,” he said with a shrug, “and I found what I was looking for.” One of her fine eyebrows quirked at that, waiting for him to elaborate. He chose to remain with pleasantries. “How do you fare?”   
  
“Well.” Frigga replied shortly, quickly cueing into how he had changed the subject and not having a bar of it. “I have not seen you of late, not since you came to me_ that_ morning.”  
  
She didn’t need to elaborate on which morning.  
  
It wasn’t like Loki had made a habit of seeking her out in nothing but his sleepwear on any other occasion.  
  
He hadn’t been _avoiding_ her, distancing perhaps, but not so noticeably that the chasm between them was any different to the relationship they had had in the prior timeline. She had been busy then, too busy to even wonder about her younger son’s comings and goings in the lead up to Thor’s coronation.  
  
The only difference now was that Loki had been open with her about something, which meant Frigga’s attention had been drawn to him.   
  
“Oh,” he said instead, “I’d forgotten all about that.”  
  
“I don’t think I believe you.”  
  
“Well then, I’ve moved past it,” he put on his most charming smile and gestured to the palace. She nodded and let him slip her arm through his, slowly leading the way back through the gardens.  
  
“Is something wrong?” Loki dared to ask after a few terse moments of silence, knowing that something weighed on Frigga’s mind as they walked, attempting to play ignorant to her thoughts. He knew that the morning he appeared to her had effected something in her quite dramatically. Some motherly instinct to _fix._   
  
He really wish she’d let it go, only so the truth of it would not slip.  
  
Not yet.  
  
“Did something happen while I was away?”  
  
“No, no,” she shook her head, golden curls bouncing on her shoulders, brushing teal silk. “I thought I’d just welcome you home.”  
  
“I’ve been gone for less than a day.”  
  
The stilted silence followed.  
  
“Your tailor’s appointment was today,” she said.   
  
“Oh?”  
  
“You _never_ forget your appointments.”  
  
“I’ll take care of it,” he said lightly, releasing her arm once they entered the alcove of the palace entrance. He could hear the sounds of a feast being prepared inside, the smells wafting their way. “Was that all?”  
  
Frigga sighed, grasping his hands and squeezing them. He could not help but feel immensely guilty for his attitude at the gesture.   
  
“Don’t look so worried mother,” he told her softly. “Surely you can’t be this upset over one missed appointment? Thor has missed so many before me and you rarely bat an eyelid.”  
  
“For Thor it is a norm,” she chided him, “for you it is an anomaly.”   
  
“I’ll send my apologies,” he promised, before reaching into his pocket dimension, producing a small bouquet of ugly little flowers. “I brought you something. I happened to fall upon a patch and had noticed your stores were low.”  
  
Frigga’s smiled, her eyes narrowing as she took the offered bunch, “You must have been up high to find these at this time of year.”  
  
“Yes, you’re welcome,” Loki answered gaily.   
  
“_Thank you_ Loki,” she corrected, gratefulness colouring her voice as she prodded at one of the small white flowers. “You were right, I was in need of them. I have a few droughts that need to be made for one of my handmaiden’s, she’s expecting and I fear it will not be easy on her.”  
  
Loki nodded with a hum, “Like Thor was on you?”  
  
The Queen laughed, “Thor was like a rumbling storm, constantly in motion. It’s this exact potion that helped me through some of the harder days.”  
  
“Was I easier?” he asked then, effortlessly hiding the tremor catching at his words.   
  
The Queen looked up at him, her smile fading only slightly. She moved a hand up to cup his face and he had to supress the pull to jerk away from it.  
  
“You were perfect,” she told him instead, and had he not been looking, an ignorant Loki would not have picked up on the hint of guilt in her voice. At the blatant lie on her tongue.  
  
He had truly learnt from the best, raised by the greatest of liars and secret keepers.   
  
Perfect? _Ha._   
  
“Please feel free to tell Thor that at any time,” Loki said instead, pulling away from her hand as he made to leave, suddenly uncomfortable at the topic of conversation despite being the one who instigated it. “Make sure to mention what a bastard he was in the womb too.”   
  
“We’re all dining tonight,” she interjected quickly, realising he meant to leave, “Privately. Just the family.”   
  
“Ah, tonight?”  
  
“You’re expected to attend.”   
  
“Why?” Loki asked, he didn’t recall any private dinners in the lead up to Thor’s big day. Why would they be dining privately this time around, “Why tonight?”  
  
“Do I need a reason to get the family together?” she asked in a tone that simply said the invitation had not been optional.  
  
“No,” Loki replied in kind. “Do I need a reason to leave the city grounds for a day?”  
  
“Don’t be clever,” Frigga shook her head with a smirk before letting it go and sighing. “Soon dinners like these will become harder, what with Thor on the throne and what with your Father-,” she paused, caught in a morbid thought before strengthening her voice and continuing. “It is right that we should spend as much time together now before we regret the moments that could have been.”  
  
Loki only knew too well what that was like.   
  
He _did_ owe it to her before he left for his venture.   
  
“I’ll be there,” he complied.  
  
“Don’t forget,” she replied.  


* * *

  
Loki kept to his word despite knowing the obvious trap he was heading into.  
  
A dinner that suddenly came from out of the blue, despite not having taken place the first time around?   
  
The only thing different this time was him and his actions.   
  
Frigga was worried for him, he knew that, ergo her poking around his doings of late. He tried to think to the time before, how different he was to create such concern. He had quietly slipped under the radar of parental concern, conspiring with Jotunheim and plotting out his next moves. Those plans had been sullied by Thor’s banishment and his own newfound problems though.   
  
Perhaps he had been more involved in the lead up to the coronation in the time before?  
  
He was dutiful back then, obedient and polished. He must truly look like a mess in comparison to the Loki of old, wearing the body of a younger, ignorant man while having the mind of one who had moved past such notions of composure and the need to impress.  
  
They were to dine in their private dining quarters, saved for family or else political dinners. It was far more refined then the feasting hall, the courses coming out one at a time, served upon at all times by only the best of staff. Food prepared specifically for the royal family.   
  
These dinners had been frequent when he was younger, growing less so in youth before becoming sparse in adulthood. The family had grown apart at some point, minds focusing on parts of their own lives not privy to other members.   
  
He sat across from Thor who looked put out at the situation, probably having faced a rough talking down to by Frigga. He spared Loki a questioning look as he sat to which the younger shrugged.  
  
Their mother was there on their left and their father at the head of the table on their right.  
  
Odin looked none too happy about their predicament either, probably pulled out of his work to attend what Loki had no doubt would turn into an intervention. He nodded towards the servants who started their work on getting the first course onto the table, a small bowl of lamb stew with a basket of bread on the table and cubed butter in an even smaller dish by its side.   
  
Loki took no time in grabbing a roll and tearing it open, his stomach growling at the sight of freshly baked bread. Frigga’s eyes watched him in his movements, looking to Odin as he did so with a knowing look. Loki ignored it, taking a large bite out of the roll as Thor did the same, clueless of what was truly happening.   
  
They ate their first course in silence. Though from the pointed looks Frigga was shooting the King she wished it were not so. Thor sighed, drumming his fingers on the table as the next course was laid out.  
  
Loki chose to be the one to speak first, wanting to get this over and done with. He rose a glass of wine to his lips, the second course already finished on his plate, small bones left along with a few beans.   
  
“Well,” he mused, the family jolting slightly at the cut through silence. He smiled cheerily, “I’m glad we all got gathered here tonight to sit in silence.” He looked to his brother. “How about you Thor?”  
  
“Have we done something wrong?” Thor asked wearily, looking between the Queen and King.  
  
“No of course not darling,” Frigga replied, eyes widening and her fork and knife stilling. “Why would you ask that?”  
  
“Maybe because of the awkward torture this dinner is,” Loki murmured into his glass.  
  
Frigga looked to his plate before looking to him.  
  
“Your appetite has grown Loki. I’ve never seen you consume as much as you have in this last week.”  
  
“Maybe he’s going through puber-,” Thor interjected before choking on air.   
  
“You really shouldn’t talk with your mouth full Thor,” Loki hummed releasing the small string of seidr with a subtle twist of his other hand, taking a sip of wine with the other.   
  
“Is it something to do with your dream?”  
  
Loki’s smile dropped when Odin spoke, before letting his lips tilt up again.  
  
“What dream?” he asked lightly, shooting his mother an accusatory glance.  
  
“We’re only worried Loki,” she said.  
  
“I’m eating more than usual and you’re worried? Are you concerned I’ll get fat?”   
  
“You have not been acting yourself.”  
  
Thor sighed in irritation, “Do I need to be here?”  
  
“No,” Loki said.  
  
“Yes,” Frigga said simultaneously, “Loki is your brother and he needs your support.”  
  
“Why, what’s wrong with him?” Thor asked, looking at his brother as though he had suddenly been struck by illness.   
  
“Nothing is wrong,” the trickster replied putting down his glass.  
  
He looked around the table, every eye on him and let out a laugh at the absurdity of the situation.  
  
“Loki?” his mother prompted, brow furrowing as he stilled his burst of joviality.  
  
“Nothing I just-,” Loki shook his head, he just could not fathom that this was all it would have taken. And all he could do was voice that thought. “It’s funny.”  
  
“What is?”  
  
“Well if all I had to do was complain about one dream to get everyone clamouring for my company I should have just been myself years ago,” Loki released honestly, shrugging once more. “It’s funny, to me at least. If my mental break had happened-,”  
  
“Mental break?” Frigga interrupted wearily, shooting Odin an even more alarmed look.   
  
Loki stopped.   
  
“What mental break?” Thor asked then suddenly. “What are you talking about?”  
  
“Yes I think we’d all like to know,” Odin agreed, his eye becoming clearer as he looked at his son. “What has happened?”  
  
“It was just a dream,” Loki cut in quickly. “Nothing more.”  
  
“There is a big difference between a nightmare and psychological warfare,” the King told him, his meal laying half eaten and forgotten in front of him. “I think your Mother is right, we do need a conversation.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Loki continued flippantly. “I _promise_ you this. I’m not crying in my rooms, I’m not burning down the palace, I’m not throwing myself from the bridge. I’m _fine_.”  
  
He realised his slip of tongue too late. He really was losing his touch.   
  
That, or he did not care any longer of what his family truly thought of him, having been too removed from their reach on him for so many years.   
  
“_Throw,_” Frigga repeated, her face growing pale. “_Throw_ _yourself off the_ _bridge_? Have you thought of _throwing_ yourself off the bridge?”  
  
Loki opened his mouth to reject the claim, but found he could not, his mouth left flapping like a gaping fish as he tried to sort out the words to diffuse the situation.   
  
Thor leaned across the table slightly, his brow now just as furrowed as their parents.  
  
“Have you?”  
  
“No,” Loki was able to blurt out. “No, it was just a jest.”  
  
“That is not something to _joke_ about Loki,” Frigga admonished seriously.   
  
“What’s wrong with you? Was this your dream?” Thor demanded.   
  
“Oh for- _I don’t want to talk about it_,” the trickster god finally snapped, anger colouring his voice before he supressed it into something more calming. “Can we _please_ just drop it, it’s not important, I don’t want-,” he breathed out, “I don’t want to talk about _this_ right now.”  
  
“But there _is_ something to talk about,” Odin stated.   
  
Loki looked to him, trying to muster up a small smile but found it was far more trying than expected.  
  
He would have to give them something, something to stop this line of questioning and the blatant concern colouring not just Frigga, but Odin and Thor’s faces too.   
  
“Perhaps,” he allowed, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “I _will_ talk to you about it, I promise you,” he continued, taking in a small breath before adding on, “but not until _after_ Thor’s coronation.”  
  
There was a mild hint of confusion on their faces now.  
  
“_We can’t just_-,” Frigga tried to argue but Loki cut in quickly.  
  
“_After_ Thor’s coronation we can have a big counselling session to all your hearts desires,” he said placating his small audience. “Alright? I’m not going to cause any distress, I promise you.”  
  
His lie went undetected, but the royal family looked to one another in silent conversation, a conversation summed up through Frigga’s disagreeing glare, Thor’s compliant one and Odin’s defeated.  
  
“Until then can we _please_ talk about something else?”   
  
“Leave the boy Frigga,” Odin said as she made to argue once more. She pursed her lips at his interruption. “He’s made his mind clear to us, we will not prod him until after Thor becomes King.”  
  
The King’s blue eye turned to look at Loki, who bowed his head lightly in silent gratitude.   
  
“But,” the King told him, intent clear in his voice, “There _will_ be a talk Loki.”   
  
“Promise,” Loki lied with a small smile.  
  


* * *

  
The rest of the dinner had passed in terse silence, Frigga obviously miffed with Odin’s concession.   
  
He did not envy the old King in what was sure to be a tense discussion after his and Thor’s departure from the room.   
  
Thor had pried lightly with no real vigour, eager to let this line of talk lie until a later date, if not ever.  
  
This was not a truth Thor wanted, perhaps feeling as though his younger brother was cutting into what should be a glorious, wondrous time for him.  
  
It was not hard to persuade Thor of his good mood, not a challenge to make sure his brother left with nothing but the idea that their parents were overreacting.  
  
Which they were.   
  
In a way it created a great warmth inside Loki, the attention on him over Thor, though perhaps not for the reasons he had wanted. He loved his mother, but she was not all knowing or perfect, she too had deceived him, had lied to his face just that day, in fact.   
  
Frigga was not without fault, but he loved her plainly nonetheless, a love less complicated than the one he shared with Thor and even more so with Odin.   
  
None of them had _seen_ him.   
  
None of them had clued in to the fact that their son had been growing colder and bitterer every day they did not see him, left to his own devices as he knocked down the first domino unhindered by blind eyes.   
  
Thor would not know how hated he ever was. He would not understand why Loki would choose to leave their golden realm. He would not realise just how fractured their relationship had become, because _that_ Loki was no longer here.  
  
What a blessing for this Thor, to not watch his family fall apart, to not have his life turned upside down before him.   
  
To not see his mother or father die, to not live through seeing his realm burned down by his own hand.   
  
To not have to watch his brother die three times over.   
  
This Thor had no idea the atrocities he had faced, the heartbreak he had endured, the strength he had gained from it.   
  
Loki missed his brother deeply.  
  
He knew there was no use in pondering on what could have been because he had died anyway. He was gone from that Thor’s life, redeemed from his wrongs (well, sort of) _but_ he had died valiantly nonetheless.  
  
He wondered if Thor had done the same.   
  
_No more resurrections._   
  
He leaned back against the wall of the corridor, watching the present Thor’s retreating back. He touched his neck gently at the sudden tightness and closed his eyes.   
  
Thanos had been wrong.   
  
Thanos _would_ pay.  
  


* * *

He decided to do as the dutiful son once did.   
  
And if he was laying it on a bit thick, well, Frigga was really the only one to notice.   
  
She nonetheless kept to her word. She didn’t bring up his dream or his wellbeing again, but she _did_ make sure to spend more time with him. He didn’t mind that so much, a younger Loki may have found it infuriating, but that Loki had never truly lost her as he had.   
  
Again that urge to stay here, stay with _them_, was strong.   
  
He owed it to Thor to see it through.   
  
So he lapped up her time like a starving animal, hung onto her every word as she spoke of the mundane and the important.   
  
He had missed her smiles, both the private and the public ones.  
  
Though they shared no blood between them, he had taken her smiles regardless.   
  
He helped with the coronation as well as the early arrivals from attending diplomats, all the while spinning soft and pleasant words and letting them grow comfortable in the palace. He did what he had done before, knew the outcome of every conversation and action, minus his own malicious plotting.  
  
Of course, he _was_ still plotting. Just in a different way.   
  
He attended the councils with Thor, listened to the vague grievances of their members, spoke a few words of sedation here and there to help Odin’s growing annoyance.   
  
“I know you don’t want to speak of it,” Odin approached, after asking him to stay behind when the meeting had concluded.  
  
“I don’t,” Loki confirmed, shuffling his papers and slipping them into a leather binder.  
  
“_If _you are in trouble,” Odin pressed. “Now is the right time to tell me.”  
  
Loki blinked at him openly.  
  
“What?”  
  
“_If _you are in any trouble you must let me know.”  
  
“To what end?”  
  
“So that I may help you,” Odin said as if it were the most obvious answer. “If you rather your mother does not know I would not speak of it to her.”  
  
The trickster god blinked again, surprised still.  
  
“I thank you for your offer,” Loki replied slowly, genuinely, “but I’m _not_ in any trouble.”  
  
The one eyed King sighed, shaking his head and looking so very tired.  
  
“You’re soon for the sleep,” Loki told him then, giving him a small smile as Odin looked at him wearily.   
  
“I am,” he complied.   
  
“You’re worried you won’t wake up from this one.”   
  
Odin looked at him narrowly, “Has your mother told you this?”   
  
“No,” Loki answered honestly, shrugging lightly. “I’m just observant I guess.”  
  
“It is true,” the old King sighed. “I fear I will not wake this time.”   
  
“Ergo why Thor is being rushed to the throne,” Loki finished, rapping his fingers on the table. Odin did not move to defend his decision instead looking at his younger son with something akin to amusement.   
  
“Bold of you to say.”  
  
“Perhaps throwing him in the deep end is the only way for him to learn.”  
  
“Loki,” Odin sighed. “I have no delusions of what Thor may do and what strife he may cause, but I also know he has a good heart and only the best of intentions. He _will_ make a good King, and _you_ a good advisor. You will need each other most when I am gone.”  
  
_Because of Hela_, Loki tacked on for him silently. The old man was a fool if he thought this version of Thor stood a chance against his first born.   
  
Hela was truly on par with Thanos in power, and were it not for their limited resources, perhaps that last battle would have come out in their favour if not for the devastation that proceeded it.   
  
That was in the past.  
  
_Future,_ he corrected idly to himself.  
  
“Thor _will_ make a good King,” he said instead, even as his blood began to boil at the thought of Odin’s trapped daughter. He liked to think it put his own history into perspective. Despite Odin having locked him up after New York at least he hadn’t been snuffed from Asgardian history.   
  
He would always be Thor’s miscreant brother.   
  
“I wouldn’t start putting your affairs in order quite yet though,” he said outright, Odin raising a brow at the outburst. “I think you still have couple of years left.”  
  
“You sound oddly confident in this,” Odin mused. “What makes you think so?”  
  
“Call it intuition.”  
  
“Intuition,” the Allfather repeated, huffing out something that could have been mistaken for a laugh. “And what is your intuition telling you of Asgards future?”   
  
_Destruction, pain, death, annihilation…_   
  
Loki smiled instead.   
  
“The sun will not cease to shine on the realm eternal.”  
  
He would make sure of it. 


	4. handle with care

He had everything in place. Everything he needed to make his plan finally come to fruition.   
  
Making his own vessel to contain the Aether had been no easy feat, having spent numerous nights that further continued into the early mornings making sure its confines were secure within his own seidr. It was an obelisk type structure, small enough to wrap one hand around it. Ancient runes meant to trap carved deeply into the dark stone, acting as windows to the hollow inside of it.  
  
_A prison._   
  
Or a decorative piece if one did not know better.   
  
Loki considered it up there with some of his greatest works, as long as it actually _did_ what it was made to do. He had some doubts, but not enough to assuage him from taking the risk.   
  
There was a chance that with the Aether released it would attach itself to him. That wasn’t really a problem in itself to him, but there was also the possibility the Svartalfar would awake at its disturbance and search him out, which was not in the rough plan he had made himself for the following year. He could extract it from himself, he supposed, but without a proper vessel in which to keep it contained he would, in this case, be the better host than anyone else.   
  
It would eventually kill him, though not as quickly as it may have the mortal woman.   
  
Loki hated not to prepare for the possibility that the Aether would not take to its new, tinier cage, but time was of the essence and Thanos was on the move.   
  
He considered, for what had to be the hundredth time since hatching this plan, whether he could just.. let it all _lie_. The wonder of not get involved with the whole thing. Just let Thanos do his worst without Asgard ever getting involved in the Titan’s mission.   
  
_You really are the worst brother.  
_  
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, rolling his shoulders before releasing it all.   
  
He _knew_ what he had to do.   
  
Asgard would suffer still without his intervention.   
  
_Thor_ would suffer.   
  
A cup smashes close by and he is suddenly brought back into the present, this particular moment all too fresh in his mind.  
  
He never forgot _this_ moment.   
  
Hadn’t forgotten the mood Thor was in.  
  
Nerves wracking the golden god bled into the air as he made to stand by the foot of the stairs, stairs that lead up to the crowded throne room still filling with people excited to see their new King.   
  
“Nervous brother?”   
  
Thor turned his head as Loki appeared beside him, giving him a small, if cocky smile.  
  
“Have you ever known me to be nervous?” the Thunderer asked him in jest, a dare to test his resolve.   
  
_There was the time in Nornheim….  
  
_Loki rolled the words in his mind, the script as plain as day ready to spring forward, to help his brother feel more at ease. To tease and coax him into the brother Thor thought he was by bringing about an old memory, a show of brotherhood that Loki had used back then in sincerity, even knowing that frost giants waited hungrily below.   
  
Loki blew out a breath, gathering himself.   
  
He would be more honest this time, with both Thor and himself.   
_  
_“_I’m _nervous,” he admitted with a small shrug.  
  
Thor looked to him, head whipping around  
  
“For what?” he asked.  
  
“For you.”   
  
“Well,” Thor exhaled, seeming to deflate, “_Now_ I’m nervous.”   
  
Loki huffed a small laugh, looking sidewards at his older-yet-younger brother.   
  
An attendant approached them with two goblets of wine, Loki chose to decline his own just as Thor grabbed eagerly for one, in desperate need of something to soothe the frantic energy running through him.  
  
Loki looked to the pudgy attendant instead, letting his brother work through his nerves in some privacy. He remembers a time when the attendant had snickered on a joke made to insult Loki’s skills, a joke between _brothers_. He remembers the goblet turning into snakes, and the way the attendant had screamed, even the sound the goblet had made as it hit the ground, spilling red.  
  
_Now that was just a waste of good wine._   
  
He dismissed the attendant with a wave of his hand, choosing to spare his humiliation this time around.   
  
Thor downed his wine quickly, clearing his throat, Loki took the empty goblet, vanishing it away as the elder god donned his ceremonial helmet.  
  
“Nice feathers,” he couldn’t help but comment, the words falling out, unable to resist the pull of them.  
  
“You really don’t want to start this again, do you, _cow_?” Thor raised a brow at him, ready to fight him on their obligatory helmets.   
  
Thor never really had gotten used to his own, choosing only to wear it in times of ceremony while Loki had embraced his intimidating helm and wore it at every chance he had. Thor had his hammer and Loki had his helm, distinguishing features of both, never to be mistaken in warzones.   
  
“Always,” Loki answered, but even to him the word reached his ears as the soppy answer that it was. He _would_ always miss their petty squabbles, especially in the years where their squabbles had turned into near fratricide numerous times over.   
  
He wanted to rip the sentiment from underneath his skin.   
  
Thor shook his head at his brother’s tone.  
  
“You’re so morose lately brother, I hope it ends soon,” Thor berated. “I can’t have you sulking by my side when I’m King.”  
  
“You won’t,” the Trickster said without hesitation, making a show of crossing his heart.   
  
“Well _good_,” Thor sighed, dropping his arms and turning to look at his brother fully.  
  
Loki almost trembled under Thor’s appraisal, the elder looking him up and down as though scouring him for information, one morsel of fact to help figure his mischievous sibling out.  
  
The Thunderer chose to sigh again, louder this time as his hands came up to squeeze his brother’s shoulders.   
  
“I _know _something is wrong, but I need you to keep up the farce for one day longer.”  
  
“Of course, I wouldn’t want to ruin _your_ day,” Loki agreed blithely.   
  
Thor frowned, closing his eyes and exhaling.   
  
“That’s not- _brother_-,” Thor began, one hand slipping up to cup his brother’s neck-  
  
_-hand was on his neck, crushing him, choking.  
  
He can’t _breathe_.   
  
You’ll never be a god._   
  
_No more resurrections._  
  
Loki grabbed the large hand in a grip and twisted away violently, reflexively moving away and creating a distance between him and his assailant.  
  
“Loki?” Thor asked, panic in his tone as he moved towards the dishevelled younger god. Hands splayed out before him as if he were approaching a spooked dear. “Brother, what’s wrong?”  
  
Loki looked around him wildly, adrenaline coursing through him, his neck aching all the while. Sweat dotted his forehead as he exhaled loudly, eyes still glancing around him in search but…  
  
_Thanos isn’t here._  
  
It wasn’t real.   
  
Loki barked a short laugh before clamping his mouth shut, eyes catching on Thor’s bright blue ones which were filled with something akin to both alarm and caution. He’d acted like a lunatic in front of his unknowing brother, his brother who was now looking at him as though he were a deranged madman.   
  
“I take it back, you _need_ to tell me what’s wrong,” Thor was telling him as he cut through the distance between them. “_Right now.”_  
  
Loki placed a hand out before him, still bent forward a little as though he had just taken a hit to his ribs, he shook his head, trying in vain to laugh it off with a thin chuckle.  
  
“Nothing,” he told his brother, halted in his approach. “It’s nothing. You just surprised me.”  
  
It was Thor’s turn to shake his head, his lips pursing together as he watched his manic little brother straighten himself back to his full height, wiping his pained expression to another blank slate before Thor’s eyes.   
  
_“Loki,”_ he started, attempting to move closer.  
  
“Just ignore it Thor,” Loki cut in, spinning on his heel and moving away from the soon to be King. He gestured vaguely to the stairs as he did so. “Go get your throne.”  
  
“_Loki-,”_ Thor tried again, rougher this time.   
  
“I’ll meet you up there,” Loki promised over his shoulder, hurrying out of the Thunderer’s presence.   
  
He did not stop until he was five flights upwards, slumping against the wall as his heart thudded loudly against his chest. He shut his eyes tightly, willing the emotions swelling up inside him to cease.  
  
He had not realised just how much of a toll it had taken on him.   
  
His death.   
  
Thanos.   
  
It had not been like this when he had died at the hand of Kurse, but then he had been at his most reclusive at that point under the guise of Odin. Nobody touched a King, and he never thought about the way he had died mostly because he was in denial he had died at all.   
  
The experience then had not been traumatic. If anything made the scar along his sternum twinge at all it was the memory of waking up in the desolate plains of Svartalfheim alone and confused.   
  
He didn’t remember the void well either, just what had come after.  
  
Loki brought up a hand to touch his neck tenderly, the phantom pain lingering uncomfortably.   
  
He opened his eyes and stared at the blank wall across from him, clearing his throat and straightening himself back up.  
  
He did not have time for this.   
  
He was needed elsewhere right now.

Frigga stood waiting in one of the antechambers off of the throne room. She stood splendid in a gown of glistening gold, hair done up in glorious braids.  
  
Her eyes lit up as they found his, a sharp if nervous smile lilting her lips as he moved to her side.   
  
“Mother,” he greeted, taking her hand and kissing it lightly.   
  
“Your brother is nervous,” she worried, with a hint of amusement to light her tone.   
  
“I know,” Loki said. “Who wouldn’t be?”  
  
He remembered his own rushed coronation, in the presence of as few as ten witnesses. Even with so little of an audience he remembered the way his arms had trembled under the weight of Gungnir.   
  
Nervous? He had been _terrified_.   
  
And hurt.  
  
And _angry._   
  
“He’ll be fine,” Loki continued, shaking that trail of thought away as Frigga continued to shift in concern. He realised then that she must have already spoken to Thor, of course she had.  
  
“Loki,” she started, ignoring his irritated groan of protest. “What’s wrong with your neck?”  
  
“It’s just tender from a spar,” he reasoned with her, making sure to make a show of twisting his neck slightly and faking a pained expression.   
  
“You told your father you weren’t in any trouble,” Frigga admonished, plainly not believing him.  
  
Loki rolled his eyes, which only made his Mother frown further. He sighed, lifting her hand once more and looking her directly in the eyes, softening his features in an attempt to appease.  
  
“I’m not in any trouble,” he promised her.   
  
The Queen’s expression fell out of its high concern, but only to drift to a mild worry.   
  
This she believed.  
  
But he knew it was never that simple.  
  
“You’ll tell us tomorrow,” she said, although there was a direct command not to be brokered in her tone and gaze. He smiled at her and moved to stand beside her, hand still clasped in his own.   
  
“Of course,” he promised, before leading her into the crowded room where she would soon watch her true born son be anointed King of the Nine Realms. 

He stands in his designated place, the place he was _meant_ to have stood years on after this event should have passed.   
  
The place the second born stood.   
  
A _privilege._

The throne cast an invisible shadow over him that no other could see.   
  
They’d never know he had sat upon it.   
  
They’d never know how they had _thrown_ him off of it.  
  
Off the bridge and down into the dark, never-ending abyss.  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
Loki snapped out of his reverie to find Volstaag leaning in his direction. He looked around to see Odin already sitting upon the throne, his wife standing dutifully by his side.   
  
Odin’s one eye made contact with his own and he looks quickly away under its gaze.   
  
“He wants to make an entrance,” he shrugs, stealing Sif’s words before she can say them.  
  
Sif only nods in agreement, dark hair bouncing where she stands.  
  
He wonders idly what became of her after he shipped her off to Midgard.  
  
“Well, if he doesn't show up soon he shouldn't bother. Odin looks like he's ready to feed him to his ravens,” Fandral huffs, shifting on his feet nervously.

_Don’t worry Odin will forgive him, _he thinks to himself. _He always does._  
  
Until he invades another realm and is banished to Midgard.  
  
A small smile plays on his lips at the irony.  
  
Of course that too had been short lived.   
  
Mjolnir is the first thing to enter the throne room, roaring at a speed that makes the audience hold their breath as it swings back around and into the waiting hand of its wielder.   
  
Thor strides cockily into the hall behind it, catching it behind his back as the crowd erupts into a blockade of sound. It echoes around the hall in one big, deafening swoop. Loki cringes against it, but not as much as he cringes as Thor spins the hammer with a flourish and holds it up before the crowd.   
  
He’s basking in the moment, relishing the constant adoration while continuing to jeer them on in their noise.   
  
“Oh _please_,” he hears Sif huff in what could only be called affection.  
  
He rolls his eyes. He truly did not miss this side of his brother.   
  
Odin does not seem too much like this side of Thor either, watching silently from his throne as his eldest takes his time approaching it. At least it was something he and Loki could agree on.   
  
Thor finally reaches the front of the dais, kneeling on one knee before his mother and father. Frigga casts him what could only be called an admonishing glance, a very fond one though. Thor chooses to wink up at her charmingly and her smile can’t help but grow on her lips.   
  
He had missed this the first time, he thinks. Too distracted by what had been going on below in the vaults, hoping that the frost giants would not succeed, concerned by the minute chance that they might just get what they came for. He had been too caught up in his own resentment of his older brother to see past his own raging mind.   
  
Odin strikes Gungnir upon the ground, silencing the entire hall with its own deafening impact, which Loki is mildly grateful for as the room grows completely still.  
  
Odin looks upon his son as a King, not a father.   
  
“Gungnir,” he says softly, his voice carrying across the calm ocean of people. He raises the spear before him. “Its aim is true, its power strong. With it I have defended Asgard and the lives of the innocent across the Nine Realms since the time of the Great Beginning. And though the day has come for a new King to wield his own weapon -_that_ duty remains the same. Thor Odinson, my heir, my first-born…”  
  
Loki decides to tune out, he has heard this part before.   
  
He looks over the crowd of people who have come to watch his brother be anointed King. He thinks how many of them would die underneath the hand of Malekith and the Dark Elves, and then how much more under the hand of Hela. He looks up at the ceiling with its painted murals, of Odin’s ascent and Asgards’ history. He knows that were he to pull it down now it would paint a whole other history.   
  
The golden realm covered with blood. A kingdom of liars and murderers.   
  
Unsurprising to him now after what he had lived through, but were he his younger self he knew that disappointment would have filled that Loki’s naïve mind. The idea that Asgard was nothing but a city built on the blood of the innocent? _Preposterous_.   
  
He had been too desensitised with Asgard by the time the truth had come out.  
  
Too detached from the realm to really care.   
  
Thor however had been deeply affected by it.  
  
_It hurts, doesn’t it? Being lied to. Being told you’re one thing and then learning it’s all fiction._  
  
“I have sacrificed much to achieve peace,” Odin continued as Loki stifled a yawn. He had forgotten how long this speech had gone, “so too must a new generation sacrifice to maintain that peace. Responsibility, duty, honour. These are not merely virtues to which we must aspire. They are essential to every soldier and to every King.”  
  
Odin finally paused.   
  
Loki looked to Thor who looked just as determined as he had in the original timeline.   
  
“Thor Odinson,” Odin says, louder this time, voice magnified in the large hall. “Do you swear to guard the nine realms?”  
  
“I swear.”  
  
The frost giants would have been in the vault by now. He remembered the way the Warriors Three and Sif had started to shiver just at the mere presence of them in the palace. He wondered if the unfortunate guards downstairs had already died by now.   
  
Spared by fate.   
  
_You’re welcome_, Loki thought idly.   
  
“Do you swear to preserve the peace?”  
  
“I swear.”  
  
“Do you swear to cast aside all selfish ambition and pledge yourself only to the good of all the Realms?”  
  
Loki had not realised the slight pause Thor made before finally consenting to this last wish.  
  
“I swear,” Thor agreed.   
  
“Then on this day, I, Odin Allfather, proclaim you -,”  
  
_Frost giants…_  
  
“_King_ of Asgard.”  
  
Loki let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as the hall erupted into sound once more.

  
  
The banquet hall was annoyingly loud for Loki as he watched everyone partake in festivities. He leaned against one of the columns close to where he had once coerced Thor into a trip to Jotunheim, unknowingly to his brother.   
  
He never did listen.   
  
Not even until the end.   
  
They were simply too different. And soon too much had happened between them that Loki no longer wished to speak openly about it, choosing to keep it to himself. Thor had never really pried, but then they’d never really gotten time to talk about it.   
  
Always too busy saving some realm.  
_  
I thought the world of you. _  
  
He looked down into his glass of wine, his appetite finally gone after weeks of cravings and private banquets. In another time he would have made sure to interact with the crowd, make sure dignitaries were pleased with their meals, with the conversation. Instead he was drenched in something he could not deny was a deep sadness.   
  
He looked over the crowd, over at Thor entertaining a small group of female Ljolsalfar who appeared enamoured by whatever story he was wooing them with. Loki sighed as he spotted Gungnir leaning against the wall, forgotten in favour of Thor’s preferred weapon. Mjolnir hung by his hip, swinging around as he moved enthusiastically with the story he was telling.   
  
“You’re not trying very hard to even seem happy for him,” a voice admonished over his shoulder. He turned to see Sif sidling up to him, a glass of her own drink in hand and a light flush on her cheeks from what he assumed was the effects of mead and dancing.  
  
“I find my mind refuses to remove itself from the spiral of all that could go wrong for him,” Loki admitted, bowing his head slightly to her and raising his own cup to take a sip.   
  
Sif moved to stand beside him and surveyed the crowd as well.   
  
“With that sort of thinking you’re not going to make it any easier for him,” she said, shaking her head with a small disbelieving laugh. “You’ve always been jealous of him.”  
  
“I have my moments,” he hummed, her eyes lighting up at the confession. “This is _not_ one of those moments.”  
  
She raised a fine, dark brow, plainly telling him to elaborate.  
  
“The throne comes with many responsibilities,” he continued. “Responsibilities I’m not sure he’ll be able to keep up with. No longer will he be able to curb his appetite for adventure and go off on quests with you all. His days will be filled with tedious paperwork, confusing communication and sordid peacekeeping.”  
  
Sif frowned, looking over to where Thor stood now, laughing jovially and lapping up the attention around him as others surged around him.  
  
“He’ll have us,” she said with blunt finality. “We’ll help him through it.”   
  
Loki smiled at her determination, tipping his head once more in her direction.   
  
“Good.”  
  
Sif eyed him once more before punching him lightly on the shoulder.  
  
“For _Norns_ Loki,” she sighed, pushing off the column to take her leave. “Just _smile_ for him at least.”   
  
He watched her slip effortlessly back into the crowd.   
  
He wondered again what had happened to her on Midgard. She had not returned when she was due to so he could only think that some mission on the mortal realm had gone awry. He wondered how she would have been taken down. Remembered his own attempt to do so with the Destroyer as his weapon, blinded by anger and hurt and betrayal.   
  
He would have seen them all dead, _especially_ his perfect, older, not-brother.   
  
He would have regretted it later, once he had calmed down, once the hurt started to subside. He would have grieved, _violently_. Who knows then what kind of king Asgard would have had had he succeeded in killing his brother.   
  
His own guilty conscience would have destroyed him eventually.   
  
But when Thor had fallen in that dusty mortal town, when Loki was certain his brother was gone, he had felt… _nothing._ Too swallowed up in his own rage to really grasp what he had done at that moment to really consider life without Thor.   
  
And now here he was. Attempting to save the fate of the galaxy simply because he knew that Thor would wish it of him, were he here.   
  
But he wasn’t, that Thor was gone.  
  
_His_ Thor was gone.   
  
He looked over to the younger version of his brother once more, sorrow filling his heart. It was his brother and yet it was not. This Thor had not suffered like his had, and had not grown as _he_ did. He was yet to learn the pain of loss, of betrayal and heartache, he was so wholly oblivious to it all. This Thor had not lost _anything_.   
  
Loki chose then that he was in need of fresher air.  
  
He moved beyond the dais of the room and out to the surrounding balconies, looking out at Asgard, the purple and blue skies with its infinite stars, galaxies swirling out of reach.   
  
One day all of this would be gone. _Would_ have been.   
  
In his time as Odin he enjoyed lounging around, doing absolutely nothing apart from the boring duties required of a King. But still he had not taken the time to enjoy the splendour of Asgard, with its golden spires, snow-capped mountains and crisp streams. One would only really try to imprint the memory of things deliberately if they knew their experience was temporary, but he never thought the whole of Asgard would turn to nothing but rubble and ash.   
  
_Asgard is not a place._   
  
“You should be dancing.”  
  
He wiped his frown away before she could see it. Turning to look at her bemusedly instead, eyebrow raised, he looked back into the merry crowd of people spinning and twirling, loud music echoing out to the balcony he stood on.   
  
Frigga came to stand beside him, hand reaching for his on the marble balustrade, squeezing it gently. His smile instantly became warmer, sparing a glance to where their fingers touched as she pulled away.   
  
“I’m not much in the mood,” he told her, looking back inside at the ruckus. “Happy just to watch it all.”   
  
She hummed lightly beside him, choosing not to pry into his mood, but only just. She let it lie between him as they watched. Thor was dancing around, though it wasn’t something Loki would call dancing per se, so to be correct, Thor was galloping drunkenly around with one lucky woman. Though lucky would be a bit of a stretch as she seemed to be very overwhelmed with the kind of attention Thor was dishing her.   
  
Loki half expected her to pass out in Thor’s arms.  
  
“I worry for him,” Frigga sighed then, shaking her head. Loki could almost barter that embarrassment lilted his mother’s voice then, and he smirked at it.  
  
“It could be worse,” he offered with a shrug. “Frost Giants could have infiltrated the vault, interrupted Thor’s coronation and sent him on a revenge journey to Jotunheim.”   
  
Frigga looked at him in amusement, shaking her head once more. “What a thought.”  
  
“I have plenty more,” he said idly.   
  
The queen huffed, clasping her hands in front of her.  
  
“It’s going to be very different around here,” she said after a moment, a frown colouring her face. “There’s something bothering me horribly, and it’s not just you and your-,”  
  
“Quirks?” he offered.  
  
“Demeanour,” she corrected with a scowl, looking back to the crowd inside as though just the air were offending her. Loki leaned in a bit closer as her eyes glazed slightly. “Something feels wrong.”  
  
Loki was no fool to Frigga’s own talents, she was powerful in her own brand of seidr, raised by witches who taught her to see with more than her own two eyes. Her intuition was by far the most impressive in all of Asgard, and that intuition could tap into other senses most could not.   
  
“Wrong?” he prompted.   
  
Frigga’s frown seemed to deepen.  
  
“It’s as though something was meant to happen and it didn’t, but everything that was planned did happen without any fault at all,” she said, irritation plain in her tone. “It doesn’t make sense.”  
  
Loki blinked, “You can feel that?”   
  
“It still lingers here.”   
  
He reached out with his own seidr for a moment before stopping himself.  
  
It was him. He was the crux of what she was feeling, these changes were a branch from himself, major events he had stopped from ever coming to be. Of course people sensitive to premonitions and energy would sense something. It was all an extension of himself.   
  
His heart jumped.  
  
What if he was wrong?   
  
What if he hadn’t been brought back to change the past?  
  
What if he was screwing up yet another reality?  
  
He took a breath.   
  
“Does it feel… bad?”   
  
Frigga shook her head and sighed.  
  
“No. If anything the reason it feels wrong is because it feels right,” she gave a short laugh. “I think I must just be getting paranoid in old age.”   
  
Loki nodded, closing his eyes to circumvent his relief.  
  
“I believe you,” he told her then, continuing at her pointed look. “I don’t think intuition is anything to deny someone, if it’s what they’re feeling than it’s obviously for a reason. Especially you mother. I’ve yet to see you be wrong.”  
  
The golden Queen smiled, moving towards him and kissing him lightly upon the cheek, squeezing his upper arm as she did so.   
  
“I think I’ve had quite enough of these festivities,” she told him, releasing him and looking back inside. “And I see your Father waning the longer this night goes on.”  
  
Loki looked to spy Odin nodding off slightly where he sat. Not quite in the merry making mood either by the pallor of him, still on the cusp of a sleep he would have been in already had the original events come to pass.   
  
Loki would have found out about his heritage by now. He would have been in his rooms, pacing as his whole world fell apart. He could almost hear the echoing sound of his mirror breaking as he lost the battle of bodily control over his panic.   
  
Odin would be in the Sleep this night had the confrontation taken place. And yet here he was, still kicking on, overseeing everyone with his watchful eye.  
  
A loud smash echoed in the hall and Frigga exhaled, “Will you-,”  
  
“I’ll make sure the new King reaches his quarters without worry,” completed for her with a twist of his lips. “Promise.”   
  
She raised her hand to his cheek indulgently.   
  
He savoured it before she pulled away.   
  
“We will talk tomorrow,” she told him sternly. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”  
  
He nodded in acquiescent, giving her a small smile and hoping the sadness of his plight did not slip through.   
  
“Say goodbye for me,” he told her as she moved away.  
  
And with one last, beautiful smile over her shoulder, she was gone.

He watched his brother.  
  
The King.   
  
Watched as he made a fool of himself in front of a crowd, who did nothing but stare adoringly back at the man instead of look away in embarrassment as Loki found himself doing. A few attempted small talk from where he sat, to which he gave as much as he was given, otherwise he was left alone in his thoughtful state.   
  
He had changed the course of history.   
  
Thor would not be banished this day, Odin would not be in the sleep this day either, and Loki… he would not be falling apart this time.   
  
And where were events to go from here? The Bifrost would remain intact for Asgard to use, Jotunheim would not suffer his rage, and he would not throw himself off the bridge and into the hands of torturers. He would not be used as a puppet for the Titan to conquer lesser realms.   
  
He shivered slightly at the thought of Sanctuary, of its barren landscapes and sharp rock. The way his head had hit the dark sediment as he was brought roughly before his imprisoner. The way his words had clawed into his brain, opened up his resolve and shredded it to pieces.   
  
The glow of the mind stone against his face, the sceptre’s point biting into his bare chest.   
  
He remembered attempting to fight.   
  
He remembered failing.  
  
The sound of a stein falling to the ground snapped him back to the present, his heart pace slowing back down as he gathered himself and looked to the sound.   
  
He was not at all surprised to find his older, but younger in mind, brother in the midst of it all and decided then to put an end to the party as Thor blinked dumbly down at the fallen ale. Seemingly offended that it would dare slip from his hands.  
  
“I think it’s time _someone_ went to bed,” Sif said softly as Loki approached, arms folded and shaking her head as Thor leant down and attempted to pick the stein up, fumbling for far longer than he would have if sober.   
  
“I think you would be right,” Loki sighed, moving forward as Thor inspected the empty cup with a frown.   
  
“It’s gone,” the blond said in confusion, just as Loki placed a hand on his upper arm. Glazed blue eyes met his, lighting up. “Where have _you_ been?”   
  
“I’ve been here the whole time,” Loki said.   
  
“Have you?”  
  
Loki sighed, quenching down the old type of hurt he felt. He shook it away.   
  
“I’m ready to retire,” he said then. “I was hoping you would escort me, to my rooms, I’m feeling a bit ill from all the drink.”  
  
Thor’s bark of laughter was too loud to his ears, the slap on his back _too_ hard.  
  
“It seems you can’t hold your liquor brother.”   
  
Loki brushed the rising scowl from his face, “Indeed. Will you come with me?”   
  
Thor swayed slightly on the spot in thought, several long seconds passed in the time it took Thor to come to his decision. Loki spared a glance at Sif in the small crowd around Thor, a bemused smirk on her face. Some of them looked annoyed at Loki’s interference, but he did not give much notice to them.   
  
“Yes,” Thor said suddenly, startling a few in the gathering, he dropped the stein in his hand and it clattered to the ground once more. Loki grimaced as one of Thor’s arms engulfed his shoulders, steering him in the direction of their quarters.   
  
A few people sang out their farewells, having caught on to the play of getting Thor in bed.   
  
Thor stumbled a few times, leaning heavily on Loki and soon enough, without the elder’s notice, Loki became the one steering them through hallways and up flights of stairs. His brother mumbled a few times about having to get back to the party and commenting on how Loki really _should_ learn how to hold his drink better.   
  
“Wait,” Thor said then, breaking away from Loki and stumbling into the wall. “I just need to- need to…” He slid down the wall, legs stretching out and his eyes fluttering shut. “I just-need a moment…”  
  
Loki shut his own eyes, taking in a deep breath before moving towards his brother and attempting to drag him down the corridor by his legs. Dragging the new king of Asgard by his legs down a hallway was probably the highlight of Loki’s day.   
  
He could have just teleported them away.   
  
He _could_ have.  
  
Thor grunted and squirmed, but Loki kept on determinedly until they were in front of Thor’s chamber doors. He pushed it open with his foot, predictably unlocked and unguarded, unlike his own be-spelled rooms, before dragging his lump of a brother through.  
  
He made quick work of depositing Thor on his bed, his brother sluggishly removing Mjolnir from his hip and letting it lay in his covers with him. Loki thought to just leave him there in his own armour, but since he was such an outstanding citizen, decided to lend this oaf a helping hand.   
  
Thor squirmed unhelpfully as Loki undressed him down to his under clothes. He left the ceremonial garb in a pile by the floor, opting he was not to be that kind to clean up after his drunken mess of a brother.   
  
“There you go,” Loki announced, pulling off one of Thor’s boots. “You’ve had a _big_ day.”  
  
Thor mumbled something unintelligible that Loki chose to ignore, proceeding to throw the boot over his shoulder and continue on to the other.  
  
“Crowned King successfully with nary a frost giant in sight,” he gave the boot a firm tug. “No fights.” The boot came free. “No banishments.”  
  
“What in Hel are you muttering about?” Voice muffled into his blankets, Thor turned his face and blinked blearily, huffing out a laugh. “Frost giants? They wouldn’t dare show their ugly faces here.”  
  
Loki paused, before nodding. “Quite right.”  
  
He sat down on the edge of the bed as Thor snuggled deeper into his quilts. He took in the youthfulness of his face, wondered how it had changed so much over a mere decade of their life. How a frown was a common occurrence on the Thunderer’s features, a sadness in his eyes for having suffered great losses. They both had.   
  
_I thought we were going to fight side by side forever._   
  
If they hadn’t diverged paths then, they certainly had now.   
  
He wanted to let go of that life, to stop wondering what had happened after his death, if not it would surely drive him back into a pit of despair he was not sure he could come back from. The Thor he had left behind. What had become of him? What of the fate of the universe?  
  
“Are you alright Loki?”  
  
Thor’s unfocused eyes looking up at him warily. He looked to his hand which had been squeezing Thor’s own as he fell once more down the spiral of thought. He released his hold, giving it another light squeeze before removing it altogether, letting it rest in his other.   
  
“I’m fine,” Loki shared, giving his worried brother a soft smile, “don’t worry about me.”  
  
Thor’s brow relaxed slightly, but he observed Loki as carefully as he could with what was surely blurred vision.  
  
“There’s something different,” he said quietly, frown settling back in. “You are _sad_.”  
  
It wasn’t a question but Loki could not help but answer, his smile wavering before settling on a firm, “Yes.”  
  
“Why?” Thor asked curiously, he’s eyelids fluttering in an effort to stay lucid, a hard battle it would seem as he struggled against the need to fall into a sleep. Loki reached out to touch his hand once more, squeezing it again.   
  
_Sad?_ He was overcome with despair.  
  
He had lost everything. And he was about to walk away from it again, willingly this time.  
  
He did not know when he would return, and Thor, though not of the Before, _was_ still here. Would still possibly become the Thor Loki had come to know. His irritating, brilliant brother.   
  
He wanted to stay.   
  
But he needed to go.   
  
And so he would take in this version of Thor, almost greedily, savouring the moment. The moment that had never happened.   
  
When everyone had been blissfully unaware of their younger prince, second son to Odin and brother to Thor, unaware of the turmoil bleaching him black from inside. This Thor, the whole of Asgard, would never know just how far Loki had turned his back on them, how much shame he had brought to them. How much utter _hatred_ he had had for them.   
  
They would not understand now what reason he had to flee. Running from the responsibilities they wanted of him, the expectations they tied him down with, the commitment of eternity as Thor’s little shadow. That’s how they would see his departure and he’s not quite sure how else to explain it to them without making them worry.   
  
They would have to talk at some point, and Loki was only happy to extend the time between now and that catastrophic conversation.   
  
Thor was still trying to maintain his consciousness, a battle he was about to lose.   
  
“We’ll talk about it later,” Loki told him, releasing the hold on his hand. “I promise.”  
  
He got up from the bed, dragging a fallen fur over Thor’s open form.   
  
It was reminiscent of the time Thor had fallen asleep in his chair upon the Statesman over pages on inventory, drool falling from the corner of his mouth and dark shadows under his eyes from sleepless nights.   
  
Loki had found him there, prone and vulnerable, having worked with a constant vigilance Loki could grant was impressive. He toyed with a pen lying by Thor’s hand, thought of scribbling on the sleeping Thunderer’s face and had steadied himself from the temptation, instead conjuring a blanket to lay over his brother’s back. Small sentiments.   
  
The Thor of now grumbled under his blanket, words muffled and unheard.   
  
“Tomorrow will shine bright on you brother,” Loki told him, looking his brother over once more before taking his leave.   
  
His heart creating a heavy pang with every step away from him.   
  
_I’ll make it right_, he promised silently. 


End file.
